Different things…
Things are going well these days. I can see it in his eyes when I look up for a kiss and he ruffles up my hair and plants one on my forehead. I call him munchkin because he is a foot taller than I am and people tend to refer to him as \’big guy\’. He picks me up and swings me around his neck and I have three history classes coming up with writing assignments that will drown me and the amount of time we will see each other will decrease significantly.
We go to the neighborhood bar where a VCU student jazz group called Neighborliness is playing to five people, and the bass player blows the figurative roof off while we tap our toes, nod our heads, drain our drinks and howl in delight as the saxophone player makes a sweet fool out of himself.
We drive all over town, drink more water than one would think is conceivable and then go home and fuck for two hours before realizing how late it is and how soon we have to be awake. Think, oh shit, why are we always living against the clock, press your forehead to my lips, you demand another kiss, I relent, you sleep, I get up and pace the bedroom for another hour while I watch the city sleep and the shadows on the wall.
I wake before you stir, before your roommate heads down to the hospital, before the alarm blasts its way into your consciousness, and I wonder what it is you are dreaming about as you toss restlesslessly. I do not think about it long and instead get up and start my morning routine alone, eventually climbinging back into bed and feeling you pull me near. We smell of the early morning, still stale from the prior night, and I think to myself that no matter how nice this feels, something will always be lacking and that something is trust and a sense of security.
By now you are awake and nuzzling the back of my neck, and my body is coming alive at your touch. The nerves that are still functioning correctly are functioning in the sensation of \’oh, me so horny\’ and my lips are starting to get moist, but it is nearing nine forty five and we have to get a move on. Four bare feet hit the bare wooden floor and you offer me the first shower, which is really in name only because you soon follow me in, despite my protests. My protests are soon echoed by yours when you discover I like my showers scalding hot and at any rate, I am rinsing the last of the suds off my legs. I brush my teeth with your bland toothpaste while you shave down to a five o\’clock shadow, and then you get dressed up for me, which results in me wanting to undress you again, but we do not have the time.
Amazingly we manage to make it on the road by ten thirty, left over pizza from the night before in hand. You drive and eat at the same time, and in the past eighteen hours you have managed to avoid three car accidents, two of which I have outright yelped at. Yes, yelped. Then there was that incident with the knife, but we will not talk about that. We got back into town an hour early, listening to My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult and me pretending to not be asleep on your arm. You do a valiant job at holding conversation with a half awake person, and I do an amusing impression of being awake. Heaven only knows what I told you in my state, strung out on antihistamines as my sinus infection steadily gets worse.
We make a few stops and then it is time for my therapy appointment, which I have been on time for all summer. Another session and Mel tells me he still does not know what to make of the \’reserved state\’ that I have been in the past few weeks. I laugh and tell him I am Secret Agent Relaxed, and that I have nothing to talk about this session, which is sugarcoated bullshit, and Mel and I both know it. You are sitting in the other room, and I do not want to talk about you while you are out there. Mel thinks it is because I do not want to stir things up in session and then have to step out and face you, but it is really because I am not sure how well the white noise box works and I once overheard one of Mark\’s sesssions with his therapist and that has haunted me to this day.
I have known you for two weeks. What we have is really good, but I am so thankful that this is what we have, and that you are where you are and I am where I am. Maybe this is what I need after all, as odd as it sounds. Ninety minutes one way to see each other means we do not waste a minute we are together; there are no petty games or squabblings. By the fourth night of knowing each other we were spending twenty four hour time blocks with each other, and it seems to be working out perfectly.
You speak of how our dynamic will change when you start your new job, about how you will not be able to see me as often, in the middle of the week or whenever you want. I wonder if that should not just be the end of it, but you would not hear of it.
Right now you have to settle for just being you.
—
I went to Richmond and I liked it. Surprise.
There is a city less than two hours to the south of here that has southern charm and has stolen my heart in less than twenty four hours. For the past two years I have listened and watched as people have bashed Richmond left and right and yet I could not help but smile at its frustrating character. It reminds me so much of Pittsburgh, and yet is even smaller. Nothing like DC. I could live there, relax there, not worry about such things as scenes and stores and people politics and I could escape into this perfect idea I have, this world that does not really exist. It exists there right now only because I want it to, but I know that I would get there and after a while I would grow unsatisfied with what I was doing and start to seek out ways to be involved again. Stop living reactively. We are only products of our environments and if we want to be a good production, we have to have a good environment.
—
Katy has asked me to write for the next Pretty Good For A Girl… zine. This one is on gender, creativity and anxiety. I am having anxiety about writing it. Does that count?
Months ago I told myself I would get my life back together and start writing again. Well I started to get my life back together, and I got happy and I developed a social life and I lost the weight and I signed up for my classes but I have not let the words come back out yet. I stopped letting them flow months ago, I put the cork in because I started to feel like I had nothing of value to say. There were certain people who made me feel like my words were worthless, and maybe they are, but sometimes late at night they have kept me company and you have not. And sometimes you have called me for those words to keep you company, you have wanted to be held by those words, so they cannot all be completely worthless.
Some of the people I have been dating recently are writers, many of them published, and the few I have indirectly given access to some of my writing have encouraged me, inspired me, one nearly forced me to write again. It is a lie to say the words have stopped; it is just that I stopped putting them down and letting them out.
In my new schedule which I am starting as soon as I kick this sinus infection, I am setting aside an hour a day for forced writing time. I have been slacking on everything: the book, the sites, the articles, the zine. Everything has just… stopped. Again. As though I feel like I have nothing worth producing, which is crap. So maybe I am not a witty slogan machine, but I have other things to offer. Right?
